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Experience at the Desk provides a solid foundation

Jacqueline Scott controls the toilet paper and mailing for many students on campus, however most students rarely even enter her building.

Scott, a senior and three year veteran of the desk staff, currently works at the apartment center desk, after working in the dorms in the past. Scott decided to become a desk staffer to get a job on campus and hopes to work her way up the ladder and become desk manager. Scott hopes that the customer service experience from this job will help with her future in business. The position also helped her to better handle situations that she may be unprepared for.

“It helps with how to handle situations that just happen. You learn how to do things that are not by the book, being a desk staff prepares me for that,” Scott said.

Whether that unexpected situation is a student losing their credit card at two in the morning, or hearing a crime has occurred near or on campus. Those situations are not what she expected when she signed up for the job, but sometimes they are unavoidable.

Having experience with both dorm desks and the apartment desk, Scott found the two jobs to be quite different even if they sound similar. In the apartments the job is much more customer service based, while in the apartment it is more social. In the dorms students pass by the desk every time they leave or return, so Scott was able to get to know some students. At the apartment center, people only come in for packages, laundry and a few random questions.

“It is more like a customer service desk unlike the other desk which actually interact with the students. We interact with the Resident Assistants to do programs in the community,” Scott said.

Scott is majoring in Financial economics and a linguistics minor in French, she is hoping that her job will help her with future interactions in the job market.

“Everyone needs customer service experience, because regardless of your job you will need to interact with potential customers, so this job will really help in that aspect,” Scott said.